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That's partly the point, though: the violence in the context of the entire film works very differently from a trailer that gives you mostly the violence. Trailers are - not exclusively but largely - advertising, they're there to make you want to buy something, which also means that trailers largely focused on depicting graphic violence tend to come across as, "Hey! This is violent and therefore worthy of your interest! Buy it and you'll get to do these things yourself!" I can't remember the trailers for The Road, but I'd be surprised if they had more than a handful of scenes of violence.

One explosion, not a one man killed (at least not shown directly on screen), intense action scenes only toward the end of the trailer (2:10, the trailer is 2:20 without final captions). And even though it doesn't represent the final movie (in the comments you can see stuff like "don't let that trailer fool you, the movie is very slow-paced & grimm"), it's done 10 times more tasteful and mature way than anything TLoU2-related so far. That's 1 for movie industry grown-ups and 0 for videogame industry manchildren.

You know, we get it already, and we've agreed to a degree already, so there's no need to keep at it and see if that dead horse turns into shoe leather.

On a different note - while tasteful, that traditional Hollywood buildup in the trailer is directly at odds with the movie's thematic goals, so it serves as another good example of how a standard marketing formula can't fit every source.

I agree on your points Thirith, wasn't really thinking about the trailer but the movie itself. when making my initial comment.... So just to get this straight: people are totally ok with the game being potentially very gritty and gory, just don't show it in the trailer which is indirectly saying, "don't sell it on those points", or at least "those points alone"... I guess it makes kinda sense... I still don't really mind the way the trailer is put together though.

About the "Ellie will be the only playable character" I think thats interesting... I enjoyed the gameplay of the DLC Left Behind (in which Ellie is also the only playable character) alot, and can only hope for some more of that.
When it comes to all the shooting and fighting and stabbing etc. it dosn't really matter which character I play, since focus in those sections typically aren't really about the characters anyways.
Regardless, I am confident ND can deliver solid piece of nerve wrecking story telling with tlou2 just as they did with the first game... I'll probably be shitting my pants all the way through though.

Hard to tell without playing the game. Context matters and all that. The trailers give the "woman wronged" vibe of an exploitation flick, but the game should be smarter than that, if the first game is any indication.

Nah, it's just I have little patience with that kind of stuff. I like calling things for what they are, and this industry loves kidding themselves, or just outright lying. Like Bethesda talking about epic stuff happening in Skyrim, while there's nothing like that going on screen. Or Ubisoft pretending to make a stealth game, with guy in white costume sitting on benches. Maybe it works for some people, I feel like I'm treated like an idiot.

Also, been playing games since I was 12, killed tons of enemies in tons of games already. Seeing years of development in visual fidelity since 8-bit era, and little development in gameplay ideas is really tiring . Games may live in a bubble and pat themselves on the back, pretending to be mature, but that will never be acknowledged in the oustide world, until devs find other means of player expression than repeatedly shooting enemies in the head.

Yup, the biggest thing here I guess is the animations. It looks like every character has their weight and momentum, and they took extra care to create these moments of agony, when characters are stabbed to death. That looks disturbing and with all the fidelity it looks like it would fit into some serious narrative. Like a really good book, or movie, where violence is dosed carefuly, and killing someone carries its weight, so there's like one or two dead bodies for the whole story. But here it's just a dressing to typical shooty bang-bang. Audiovisual department is hanging out with the big dogs, but gameplay design team is still a bunch of puppies.

God forbid that people make an entertainment product which they want to be financially successful. Those "serious" indie games which the likes of "gaming journalists" praise? Bugger all people actually buy "games" like Sunset and Where the Water Tastes Like Wine. Action-adventure games with a lot of shooting are things which sell.

Several "gaming journalists" moaned about the action gameplay of BioShock Infinite. I can guarantee you the game wouldn't have sold anywhere near enough to recoup its budget if it had just been a Chinese Room-esque walking simulator.

Originally Posted by Judith

The violence would be more meaningful, if there were fewer acts of it, and if the combat didn't mean slaughtering people by the numbers. And it all falls further apart, when she gets shot, and she reacts to it as if it was a moskito sting, and not something really serious.

Obviously it's only a small slice of the game. Apply some common sense, you're only going to be shown so much in PR material. tLoU1 was a 12ish hour experience with many mundane moments/a lot of "down time"/etc. I highly doubt that the sequel will veer much from the trail left by the first in this respect. Given the pacing of tLoU,1 I felt it was fairly successful in the balancing act of being a cinematic storytelling experience and a gritty, atmospheric action game.

Don't forget that they're making a fucking game aimed at the masses of normies, so they have to make the actual gameplay be FUN for that particular audience. Making some concessions to realism is a common thing in game design to achieve an experience which is FUN for players. Eg player characters having super-human resilience; respawning in multiplayer games; running over health packs to recover statistics-based health; magically refilled gun magazines upon reloading; etc.

There certainly is an audience for hardcore simulations, but it usually isn't the Joe Average PlayStation owner.

Originally Posted by Judith

Also, been playing games since I was 12, killed tons of enemies in tons of games already. Seeing years of development in visual fidelity since 8-bit era, and little development in gameplay ideas is really tiring . Games may live in a bubble and pat themselves on the back, pretending to be mature, but that will never be acknowledged in the oustide world, until devs find other means of player expression than repeatedly shooting enemies in the head.

Ah, so you're using this thread as a portfolio piece for your job application to Polygon? Gotcha. Shoot Malygris a message too, he writes for a similar agenda pushing outlet, PC Gamer.

Also, a movie version of TLOU has been in development hell for many years, but it looks like they finally decided to make a TV series out of it instead. Sounds like a good decision to me. Seems likely Part 2 would become Season 2 if all goes well.

Of all games though, this the one that should be released in the middle of a pandemic.

Thematically it fits. The reality is that physical copy sales are still the bulk of console game revenue. It's currently hard to manufacture physical copies, so they'd probably miss out on a lot of full price sales.

If they do a digital only launch and physical launch later, I can easily see a vocal contingent who wanted physical boycotting the game until it's on sale for a discount.

It's making a point about the cycle of violence and stuff. You know the scene from Austin Powers where a henchman gets killed and they then cut away to the henchman's family getting the news about his death? Kind of like that, but with more gore.

Man, that's so old hat now. What we need is a next-gen reimagining. I'm thinking like Days Gone, but around a bicycle of violence. Yanno. Tearin' up the road. Tearin' up people. Tearin' up the concept of abstract metaphors.

Anyway, I think it's interesting that they're essentially pushing Ellie down the same path Joel went, and from a bird's eye view, no one seems to have learned or taken heed of any lessons from that.